Collection Development

Collection Development Updates

Each year, Collection Development works with librarians and faculty to evaluate collections and make changes based on many factors, including usage and budgetary constraints. One of the more significant yearly projects is to evaluate the library's subscriptions to journals and databases to determine what should be added or removed. Adding new resources often requires taking away others, and during this process feedback from the campus community is important.

Changes to the Collections

Decisions about adding and subtracting subscriptions are made by the Database and Serials Evaluation Team (DASET), which is a committee of six librarians. Each of the six librarians represents broad subject areas, such as humanities, social sciences, business, science, and engineering.

Subscription purchases are guided by documented use and specific needs with an emphasis on economy and "just in time" rather than "just in case" acquisitions. Some worthy items cannot be purchased, but the library will continue to focus on supporting university priorities, caring for significant and unique materials and brokering access to resources which are not locally owned. Some subscriptions are acquired by the Utah Academic Library Consortium, which selects and buys journal packages and databases for all Utah college libraries. Other subscriptions are purchased cooperatively with other organizations, such as the Greater Western Library. Alliance.

Every year, the cost of subscriptions are projected and evaluated against the Library's budget. Many subscriptions have annual price increases exceeding two to five percent, and the Library's budget is often not similarly increased. Therefore, it is common for the Library to review and reduce the number of subscriptions maintained. Rather than examine the entire collection every year, classes of materials are sometimes identified for closer examination, for example, electronic journals with a high cost per download or print journals with low use. Data is gathered and kept on thousands of titles and provisional lists are made of titles selected for possible cancellation or withdrawal. Throughout this process, we remember extenuating circumstances, and review lists are intentionally created to include a greater number of subscriptions than the minimum needed to balance the budget. Review lists can then be extensively modified as we receive more information and opinions from patrons and colleagues.

In smaller and ongoing reviews, the Library uses a quarterly updated webpage listing the titles selected for possible cancellation or withdrawal. If a major review of subscriptions is underway, then the Library's liaisons will inform academic departments. Some departments give librarians direct access to e-mail lists of all faculty and graduate students. In other cases, communication goes through the faculty liaison the department has selected.

Comments are invited on all subscriptions, and Collection Development staff and DASET will evaluate all comments.

Please see this FAQ document for answers to some of the most frequently-asked questions regarding the cancellation process.

This list of new subscriptions contains the journals and databases added to the Marriott Library during recent years.

These titles under review for possible cancellation or withdrawal are currently being considered for cancellation or removal. If you would like to speak with library staff about the review process or share concerns about specific titles, please use the link at the top of this page ('Contact a Subject/Format Specialist or Team') to find the correct subject specialist or team to send your questions to, or contact Mark England.

Collection-Related Resources

While this page is largely devoted to an overview of Collection Development's activities, many patrons inquire about ways they can get new resources added to the library's collections. If you want us to purchase materials, loan you materials from a different library, or if you would like to donate something to the Marriott Library, you may wish to use one of the following links:

Suggest a PurchaseYou may use this form (located under the 'Services' section of the library website) to suggest a new purchase for the library. You may also suggest new journal or database subscriptions. While we can purchase most book requests, new subscriptions to journals or databases are constrained by budgets. We often must balance requests for new journals and databases against ongoing funding for existing subscriptions.

Interlibrary Loan and Document DeliveryFrom the Interlibrary Loan page (also found under 'Services' on the library website), you can request a temporary loan of an item from another institution. In most instances books are available within one to two weeks and photocopies of articles can be provided as quickly as 24-48 hours.

DonationsIf you would like to donate something to the Marriott Library, this page (found under 'About the Library' on the library website) provides instructions on how to do that.